Scotts Valley martial arts instructor speaks out on SF plane crash

Elliot Stone, left, talks about what he witnessed during the San Francisco plane crash. (July 9, 2013)

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. -

Elliot Stone of Scotts Valley asked his girlfriend Elena Jin to marry him. He popped the romantic question on their final day of vacation in South Korea Friday.

The following day, the newly engaged couple survived a plane crash at San Francisco International Airport. Asiana Airlines Flight 214 burst into flames as Stone, Jin, and six others they were traveling with jumped out, slid down emergency slides, and ran for their lives.

"It is not the ideal engagement, but I am just glad that we all made it," Jin said Tuesday.

Stone is the popular owner of Elite Martial Arts Academy on Mount Hermon Road in Scotts Valley, and on Tuesday he held news conference at the academy. Stone's parents, brother, fellow Elite Martial Arts Academy instructor David Schimmel, Jin, and Jin's sister, had traveled to South Korea for two weeks for a Korean martial arts tournament.

Flight 214 picked up passengers in China before it picked up Stone's group in South Korea and continued on to San Francisco. The hulking plane was barely above the San Francisco Bay when it clipped the seawall at the end of a runway and slammed to the ground.

"I remember thinking we had pulled it off for a second. And then the plane started fishtailing," he said.

Stone, who was sitting in the middle coach section of the plane, said everyone's heads hit the ceiling on impact. He grabbed his fiancee's arm, looked into her eyes, and thought, "...this might be it."

A second later, Stone saw some passengers fall out the back of the plane through a blown-out hole, including two Asiana flight attendants who were ejected on impact.

"It was the most terrible thing I've seen," he said in an interview with CNN Saturday. "The back got the worst of it."

Most of the 307 passengers and crew on board made it out of the fiery wreckage alive, but two 16-year-old girls from China were tragically found dead on the runway.

Stone aided injured passengers on the runway, and he said emergency responders took a long time to reach all the victims.

At Tuesday's press conference, Stone's father Walter Stone said he feels "extreme" anxiety and emotion when he thinks about the possibility of his entire family dying in the crash.

"I feel very sad for the families of those injured and killed. It's very traumatic when I think about those women on the runway," Walter Stone said.

Amid the marvel of nearly all aboard Asiana Flight 214 surviving, authorities are investigating an unspeakable tragedy that may have unfolded during the frantic rescue -- whether a teenage girl made it out of the plane only to be run over by a fire truck that was racing to the scene.